


Silver Circle

by kyanve



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: M/M, No major warnings, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Sheith Reverse Bang 2018, folklore hodgepodge, shipfic with an ensemble cast, urban fantasy au
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-07-26
Updated: 2018-07-26
Packaged: 2019-06-16 11:57:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,788
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15436551
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kyanve/pseuds/kyanve
Summary: Keith's been getting along fine as a lone wandering fox, not settling anywhere, chasing problems and taking on other supernaturals who decided power meant they could take advantage of others, but there's been more incidents and the trouble's been getting smarter, nevermind it getting harder and harder to exist around humans without some kind of on-paper identity.After a mystery shadow tricks him into the path of a downtown bus, he finally breaks down and starts looking for help, only to get fast-talked into joining a dragon's organized effort by a shady owl.  Now he gets to deal with keeping up appearances for the Respectable Business front they're keeping, underworld creatures that're intent on starting trouble -And getting unexpectedly set up working closely with another fox who's determined to get Keith learning to relax now and then around their hunting.Sheith Reverse Bang fic, based on prompt and (included) artwork by the lovely Blanc (flimmerpen @ Tumblr!)





	Silver Circle

It was an unfortunate truth that while there were people very good at fabricating fake identities, it was becoming increasingly difficult to move around in the human world without a more solid show of Having A Life. Keith wasn’t that old, really, but he had caught the tail end of the days where humans just accepted strange people drifting through and knew to not ask too many questions, at the least, or where you could just sort of hang around the edges of an area and be accepted as a local oddity. 

Well, it still worked in some rural areas, but lately some of what he was on the trail of had been more and more a thing of cities. That meant spending time in cities, which meant running into the limitations of being the Local Cryptid Weirdo With No Documentation Who Just Exists. 

He’d known he wasn’t the only one with a habit of chasing disruptions and problems or things that just Felt Off. Hell, he’d known there were old courts of various types and authorities among the various supernaturals that organized efforts for a while. 

He’d just avoided them; he never had a lot of trust or love for taking orders and just trusting someone else to make decisions. 

Then he ended up on the trail of a shadowy shape that had been lurking around. He’d never gotten a good look at it, just caught whiffs of something foul and the aftermath of something influencing the humans toward the worst.

Three close calls and almost getting hit by a bus later, he resigned himself that all he was going to get on his own was humiliated at best; that he needed a good cover for the humans so he didn’t end up arrested again as a “person of interest” for being “suspicious” around “crime scenes”, and maybe he should sometime sort of maybe possibly see if there was someone else to help track the thing down. 

A little nosing around led to a shady owl girl with connections who was supposed to be one of the best at arranging identities and getting around the increasingly complicated human technology, security, and record-keeping, and the next thing he knew, he not only had a fake identity, he’d been ~~fast~~ talked into a job that would mean both some human-side connections and cover and some kind of backup.

He stared up at the building from the outside, trying to tell himself it wouldn’t be so bad. 

He hadn’t really heard anything worse about the ocean dragons and their courts than them being sometimes overly invested in protocol and a bit self-important, but otherwise “decent enough”. 

The company was doing a lot of work on the human side to try to counterbalance more mundane corruption, adopting research to improve things that human-run companies were abandoning as ‘not profitable enough’ and working to set a visible precedent that ethics weren’t actually a detriment in the hopes the humans would follow.

According to the owl girl, they were also working on managing some of the growing unrest on the supernatural side to keep that from turning into a disaster.

He shoved his hands in his pockets and headed in through the side door, trying to ignore the feeling of ears that weren’t physical at the time flattening back against his head.

The side lobby was small, with a receptionist who barely glanced up at him as he made for the elevator. 

The elevator was normal enough for some kind of corporate office, large and clean brushed metal, with a short, clean carpet. Keith had plenty of time to study it while it went up more floors than any building ever really needed, feeling out the wards that’d been built somewhere inside the walls of it, and counting the faint scratchmarks where people with claws had been careless and not entirely in human form in it. 

Eventually, it opened onto the kind of open lobby he never would’ve gone near normally, with cushioned chairs spread in a circle, glass-topped tables, and marble planters with exotic flowers. 

Backup. Resources. Not getting tricked into the path of Route 47 again. He took a couple steps into the lobby, repeating those to himself mentally as a ward against the urge to go out the nearest window and not deal with signing off on being a dragon’s minion. 

He only really had two seconds to ponder that anyway before there was a blur of cheap denim with flashes of blue scales making straight for him.

“EEEEEEYYYYY you must be the new guy!”

Keith flailed, backpedaling along the wall and almost tripping back over one of the chairs with an awkward squawk, ending up floundering and draped backwards across it in a pile of limbs while the offending blur leaned over and held a hand out like nothing had just happened.

The parts of him that were still in human form looked dark-skinned hispanic - then there were the blue-finned ears, patches of blue scales, and the mouth full of sharp teeth that were all very visible with how he was grinning, and the claws, scales, and light webbing on his hands. 

He stared at the fish-person, the sprawl over the chair turning into hanging onto it as if it would somehow act as a refuge. “Why are you -?” He waved a hand at the scales and - everything.

The fish-person rolled his eyes, waving it off dismissively. “On these floors, nobody cares. The only humans allowed up here know anyway. I keep trying to get Allura to put in some pools and water channels, but she keeps huffing something about ‘at least trying to keep up pretenses’ even though one of her father’s buddies totally agrees with me on it.” He stuck his hand out to Keith again. “Anyway, I’m Lance, and I’m here to show you around.” 

Keith stared at him for a long minute, then finally reached up to accept the hand, Lance pulling him to his feet. 

And then pulling him off toward one of the doors out of the lobby. “So this’s the entrance lobby for these floors, it’s meant to be kind of a waiting room thing but there’s almost never anybody coming up here that we don’t expect anyway so there’s not much reason for it besides appearances or something. Back through these doors is the main hallway for these floors…”

He at least let go of Keith’s hand after a couple hallways, but the stream of words kept up, and Keith hit a point where he was catching every third or sixth word of it and not really retaining much more than some vague general idea; it didn’t help that Lance’s ability to stay on one topic was hazy at best - one moment, he was going on about what kind of work some set of labs did, the next, he was on some tangent that Keith had zero context for but was pretty sure was office gossip.

The place was a maze, and while most of the rooms could at least pass themselves off as belonging in a normal human office building, Keith was catching bits of protective sigils on flowerpots and things in display cases that had enough power to set his teeth on edge walking by. 

There were other people around, but most of them just stepped back, staying out of the way with enough amusement that Keith was starting to suspect that Lance being the tour guide was a hazing ritual of some kind. Most of them were more discrete than Lance, although when Lance stopped in one larger room with several desks, there was an owl perched on an upper shelf with more than enough aura to get Keith’s attention, head swivelling around to fix attention on them as soon as they entered the room.

The bird’s stare didn’t leave Lance once, and Keith could’ve sworn he felt a couple less than friendly, if ineffectual, prods at Lance’s shields going past him.

Keith gestured a few times, trying to get Lance’s attention while Lance was on some tangent about The Time Ryner Was Visiting And Got Accidentally Nailed With A Prank; it took a couple attempts.

“-lucky for Pidge and Matt she’s the kind of fae that just gets impressed by what you pull-...eh?” Lance blinked, stopping still in mid-gesture in confusion. 

“What’s with him?” Keith jerked his head toward the owl, hoping he’d guessed right on the pronoun; English was a clunky language that way, even if using the local human language was easier than playing ‘who speaks what’ roulette.

“Oh, Matt? He’s just pissed I forgot his coffee again.” Lance gave the owl an unimpressed look. “You can stop sulking about it, we both know you’re not going to actually curse me for that even if you _could_ get it to stick on me. Which you can’t.” 

The little screech owl made a thin, quiet wheezing and half-hearted sounding shrill noise, puffing out and scrunching down on the shelf.

Keith raised an eyebrow and decided he was just... going to leave the owl alone for now and not ask any more questions. Pidge had been shady enough about talking him into this as it was. 

"So this place seems... pretty established. Mostly." He motioned back at the shelf, carefully not looking over at Matt.

Lance tilted his head, blinking a couple times to follow where Keith was going. "Oh, kinda yeah, but you know how it is - most of us just kinda stick with our own kind and get all weird about adjusting to the way the humans change everything so quickly, and then even if you are breaking out a bit and networking and all, it just kinda turns into you and the other ten or so in that area clumping together and staying put and all." He shrugged loosely, leaning on the nearest desk. "Organizing a bunch of the little groups into something coordinated that'd also work with the humans was the idea of the big bosses, but they're pretty busy flitting all over and juggling politics on both sides, so the Princess is the boss around here."

That took some processing. He'd heard about groups of supernaturals getting involved in human affairs or dealing with the overlap areas, but it was getting harder and harder _not_ to deal with the humans one way or another. Lance wasn't wrong that even then, it tended to be different pockets sticking to themselves in their own territories; Keith had plenty of experience with the widely varying and often lacking degrees of warmth towards unfamiliar others showing up in those spaces. 

Honestly, even the occasional mixed groups he'd run across tended to be suspicious and mistrustful; in areas that had more Foxes around, they didn't want to gamble on What Kind Of Fox had just wandered in when the more malicious or self-serving of Keith's kind had a penchant for scams and backstabbing, while places that didn't deal with Foxes often just got uncertain about strange and potentially unpredictable unknowns. 

Which brought him to the other part that was sinking in. "So this is a bigger network?" 

"Oh, yeah, the big bosses all have their own operations in their old territories and they've been networking deals with local leaders and travelers where they can, it's spread out pretty far." Lance was posing and almost preening, then paused. "Wait, you honestly hadn't heard anything?"

The ears he didn't have showing flicked back, and he folded his arms. "People don't like random foxes prying into their business. I'm pretty used to keeping to myself around the fringes." He looked away, glowering out the window. "The thing I've been chasing is just more trouble than usual." 

Lance whistled low, then grinned lopsided in a way that made Keith suspicious. "So you really don't know anything?"

He shot Lance a dull glare. "I got recruited to help deal with whatever's creeping in trying to sabotage both sides. I don't need or want to get involved in politics." 

"Well aren't you a charmer." Lance was still grinning. "Well, you're going to be part of a brand new department. To the humans you're going to be a leader in disaster response and prevention programs." 

He half-shrugged; he was fine with looking out for the humans whether they knew the whole story or not - even as stupid, obnoxious, and sometimes destructive as they could get, they were fragile, most of them couldn't defend themselves against anything they called supernatural, and it wasn't like the Others couldn't be short-sighted self-centered self-righteous assholes, too. 

"To the rest of us, you're going to be part of a team for 'disaster response and prevention' dealing with others that don't get that wrecking shit impacts everybody." 

"I know what I signed on for, Lance." Play at being a normal human business, work with an actual human business part to deal with things on that side, then go out and do exactly what he'd been doing on his own anyway. "Why didn't you have something like that already?"

Lance shifted the hand leaning on the desk. "Little ones in local spaces, yeah, and informal stuff with whoever catches on to something going after it; but that hasn't been cutting it lately. The big bosses think that if we organize it, it'll be easier to coordinate things and be prepared when shit happens." 

He sighed. At least he was getting to focus on that, and hopefully wouldn't be too bogged down in politics and dealing with people and organizational circuses. "Fine. Where am I going to be and who else am I dealing with?"

"Oh, this is the office area that's getting converted over." Lance tapped a claw on the desk he was leaning on; it was empty and pristine, without any kind of nameplate or identifier. Keith wasn't sure how he felt about having a desk in an office building. "They're still putting together who's going to be specialized here and who's just going to chip in, but you're going to be seeing a lot more of the Holt kids." Lance nodded toward Matt, and Keith tried not to look back at the owl. "There'll probably be a few other new people, and you'll meet your new boss soon enough." 

"Great. I'm looking forward to it." He didn't care how obvious he was with the flat sarcasm. Lance snickered.

The door opened behind him, and Lance straightened, although not enough to have his hand off the empty desk. "Princess! I was just finishing giving the fresh meat the tour." 

 

Keith turned around, and blinked, taking a half-step back. 

There wasn't any effort being put into projecting, but her aura filled the room easily just as a passive presence, the pressure changing as if heralding a storm coming in. She walked with an easy glide, long white hair partly tied back, a bright contrast on dark skin with blue eyes, a couple of mice perched on her shoulders with thin glamours of normal pelt colors over bright ones. 

She wasn't any taller than him, but she felt taller. 

"And without any incident, as well." She was clearly approving of that, although Keith found himself a little worried about the way it was framed - as if "without incident" was somehow unusual, and without specifying anything about what was meant by 'incident'. "The Holts have told me a good deal about you; it will be a great boon to have a capable disaster response specialist from the start, and I have _very_ high expectations for you." 

He swallowed, nodding, then caught up to part of it and turned to stare hard at the owl on the mantle.

Matt shifted, puffed up proudly with an unrepentant feather-fluff. He thought he'd usually tried to avoid too much attention, so them investigating his trail was unsettling. 

"Thanks, I think." He squinted at the owl one more time before returning his attention the princess. "So you're the boss here?" 

Lance had taken a few steps back, watching with an amused smirk; the "Princess" raised an eyebrow. 

"Allura, please. We'll all be working closely together, and I find formalities are best saved for courtly politics and dealing with the mortals if we're to rely on each other in times of crisis." 

"So you've been keeping track of things coming out of the woodwork lately." He leaned on the desk, folding his arms. 

"Yes. And you were not wrong that the rates of ... incidents. Have been increasing to a worrying extent of late." She inclined her head, studying him. "King Zarkon has been investigating affairs in the underworlds, but until he manages to find the cause, it will be up to us to manage the intrusions into this plane." 

A little red flag went up in his head; this was the kind of large-scale politics he never wanted to be a part of, but if they were going to screw up in a way that kept spilling over into his path, he wasn't going to have a lot of choice. "King Zarkon?" 

Lance stifled down a laugh behind him, and Allura just gave him a brief, long-suffering look. "Yes - he's an old friend of my father's, and has been a long ally in keeping balance and encouraging cooperation between the realms. He's been rather preoccupied with his own concerns of late, and has said he has suspicions as to the causes of the increase in the more blindly vicious and hostile underworld beings getting through barriers meant to keep them from causing havoc, but he doesn't have enough information yet to bring in outside aid without upsetting the politics of that realm unduly." 

Definitely more than he'd wanted to get involved in. 

"It's been more than just that - it seems like every possible direction of malcontents has been stirring lately, and even some otherwise respectable leaders have been suggesting that perhaps we shouldn't be as cautious about co-existing with the mortals." 

He could feel his ears dipping back. He had his own opinions about the mortals sometimes, but that only really proved the supernaturals weren't any better. "You mean they think we should be pushing back and lording it over them." 

She closed her eyes, bowing her head. "Yes. Some of them have been skirting implications they believe it was better to demand worship and exert control over them."

He rolled his eyes. "Right, because that's really better than the mortal idiots who want absolute obedience, look down on anybody they think is lesser, and think they're fixing things by turning on anybody different or who disagrees with them." 

Lance was grinning off to the side, visibly trying not to laugh; Allura just looked increasingly long-suffering. "I understand it may be hard, but if you do end up dealing with other factions, do try to be civil." 

He nodded with a dim look; that was one of the exact reasons he hadn't wanted anything to do with politics. "So who else is in my department? Does the bird live here?" He jerked a thumb at Matt.

Maybe he should've been more polite, but he didn't like finding out people had gone snooping through investigating him.

Allura stifled a small laugh. "The Holts run the computer systems for the building, and also are responsible for gathering information; they're essentially their own department that we all go to. They can be eccentric, but they're extremely reliable." 

He shot the owl another glare on 'eccentric', and the owl just seemed more proud of himself for it. 

"As for the rest of your department, the actual head is en route and will be arriving in a few days; depending on circumstances you're likely to be borrowing others that specialize in other areas, but you're the first dedicated member of it." She nodded to Lance and Matt. "It was a little hastily arranged, but it seemed like there was a need for some solidity quickly; we'll have your part of the office properly arranged completely within the next day or so, while you're still getting bearings. Lance will be handling the general orientation, and feel free to bother Matt if you have any questions or need anything." 

She excused herself not long after, leaving him alone with the two of them; Matt at least did the courtesy of dropping into human form, and Keith soon wished he'd go back to hanging out as a bird. 

By the end of it he did at least have some start of an idea on where things were and what he was supposed to be doing, although it'd derailed into editorial commentary, bad jokes, and human memes frequently, and Keith was not entirely sure there weren't some "joke" booby-traps in among what he'd been told. Matt definitely didn't seem any less sketchy than Pidge and, if anything, seemed twice as likely to join in on whatever Lance might be planning. 

It wasn't as bad as he was afraid of so far, but he was still relieved to get out of the building and into the open air again by the end of it. 

 

*************************

He might not’ve known specifics yet, but now he was at least armed with access to better maps of the area - and ones marked with power points and known supernatural features, at that - and the whole night to go work on getting his bearings better and learning the lay of the land. 

Maps helped, but getting the view himself and learning the area firsthand was better.

Human traffic slowed down at night but it never entirely stopped; it was easier to get around as a Fox, where most of them would just see a normal red fox and anybody who noticed what he really looked like was probably worth the attention anyway.

It seemed like a quiet night with no sign of his mysterious problem, then he caught a glimpse of something shadowy with the feel of a larger aura being masked ducking around a corner down a narrow set of alleyways. It didn’t feel quite right for his problem, but something felt sketchy about it - off in a way he couldn’t quite put his finger on.

And whatever it was had a decent amount of power, but was trying to hide that it was there, well enough that he wasn’t sure he would’ve noticed it if it hadn’t passed a few feet from him.

He packed down and filtered his own aura to match the background noise of the city a little better and took off after it, running half up walls to get over fences and ducking through gaps his human form never would’ve fit through. 

He wasn’t losing it, but he wasn’t getting any chances to get a better sense of what he was chasing one way or another; it had to‘ve noticed him by now. If he let this go on too long, he was going to end up getting lured into another bus or something.

It crossed a street low to the ground, making for a small park with trees overgrown to give it some separation from the city andset by some passing supernatural with some simple sheltering wards to keep it more masked; the physical shape of the thing he was chasing was bigger than he was, but by less than he was expecting, even if it was still under some kind of obscuring effect.

It was either a mistake or a trap - it’d be easier to avoid notice and interference in the little warded park, which would make it easier for him to corner the thing - or for it to wait in ambush.

Keith dove in, ready to strike - he could handle whatever it was, he’d taken down things that thought he’d be an easy target before.

Nine silver spread out across part of the clearing with the outline of a silver-grey body twice his size, with ghostly pale flickers of gold-white foxfire dancing in the air around the other Fox, who was visibly waiting for him; he skidded to a stop in front of them. 

Probably bigger than him in more ways than just size and almost definitely older - there just weren’t many weird unknown old gods sleeping in random caves with enough sense of humor to gift random idiots who tripped over them.

Keith kept his ears out and his tails fanned up behind him, facing the other Fox head-on. “Who the Hell are you and what are you doing here?”

The other fox tilted their head, ears perked, almost radiating amusement. “I was about to ask you the same thing.” 

"I'm on patrol." Keith lowered his head, keeping a careful half-crouch, ready to move. 

"Really." The smug was starting to get on Keith's nerves. "Looking for anything in particular?"

"Just anything suspicious." His ears pricked forward, and he took a half-step forward, focused on the larger fox. 

"Well, if I see anything suspicious, I'll be sure to let you know." The other fox was _amused_ , the smug starting to grate on Keith's nerves, and started to turn to leave. 

Keith dodged in front of him, staying in the way.

The other fox tilted his head, still far too smug. "Something the matter?"

He bristled. "Yeah - you thinking you can just skulk around like that without an explanation what you're doing here." Even if a stronger fox was wandering around just to wander, they rarely passed through places without doing _something_ , and with things getting worse, he wasn't going to place bets that another nine-tail was just out to enjoy the scenery and engage in random acts of charity. 

Especially not one with that tally of signs they'd been through some pretty serious fights.

His attempt at being intimidating just got a bemused earflick. "Going out for a walk?" Nine silver tails flowed back lazily. "I just got into town, the weather's clear... a little too far in the middle of the city for stargazing, but I thought I'd have a look around, maybe check out the view from one of the taller buildings in a bit." 

Keith's ears flattened back, and he rolled his eyes. "Yeah, because nine-tails always just wander in to go sightseeing." 

"You get old enough and you get to appreciate the little things more, I guess." 

He wasn't taking Keith seriously, at all. 

And he was still going, tallying things off as if he were a random tourist. 

"I've heard there's some great pastry shops around this neck of the woods, too; I thought I might check those out, make the rounds of the coffee shops, maybe check out the fish markets while I'm back around the coast, find some art galleries tomorrow..." The strange fox's ears perked forward. "Any recommendations?"

Keith stared, mouth open. He couldn't come up with an answer even if he felt more like humoring it, and there was a lopsided half-open grin from the other fox - because normally if you had been around a place long enough to claim it on patrol, you'd know the area better than anything short of literal location-bound spirits, and it was like he _knew_ somehow that Keith had just arrived himself. "I dunno, I've been a little busy dealing with chasing skulking bastards out causing trouble." 

"Too bad. You really should take a day off sometime, make some time to enjoy the place more." 

Keith snorted. "Maybe when I know what you're up to so I can tell if I should be trying to kick your ass or not." He shot the other fox a pointed glare.

There was a stifled laugh.

The asshole was _laughing at him_. "Well, much as I'd love to stay and chat, Venus is setting soon and I should be finding a good rooftop. How about we pick this up again in a few days?" 

Keith bared teeth. "Oh like Hell you-"

The other fox vanished. 

It was a glamour, he knew it was a glamour, but the second it took to sink in was long enough that trying to pounce the spot the other fox had just been standing got him nothing but grass in his teeth; there wasn't even a trace to tell which way they'd gone. 

He stalked around the area in a spiral out, trying frantically to pick up something, anything to give him a clue where the other fox had gone, but there was nothing; they’d masked their trail out so thoroughly that it was as if they’d never existed. 

He wasn't sure what was a bigger twitch - the idea that he'd just met his mystery shadow that'd been playing games with him, or the idea that it wasn't the mystery shadow, and there were _two_ beings in the area that could make an idiot of him that easily.


End file.
